Can you be alittle more detailed please,  such as news articles, are you talking about reading a news story and then publishing your version or using copy and paste or are you talking about a integrated world news feed into he software. 

Also on the business directory are you talking about an already established directory or starting from scratch.

With the directory. It would be started from scratch. Well I will be copying stuff from my old site. It is a directory of autism specific services in the UK. So I would need to be able to add title, description, contact details, website also . hope that makes sense. 

Hi,  what i do for the news is just make a group called news (our you can use the blog if you want)  and the post to it, or you can use the forum...

for the directory you can use the forum as well.  You can also use the event plugin i think that will work well for that and its free.  You could change the text in the admin language to show directory instead of events. http://www.oxwall.org/store/item/44

this is an extention of that but it is paid plugin from  one from a very good developer.  So you install the free one and then this over the top of it.   I have alot of his stuff and very happy with it.

http://www.oxwall.org/store/item/374

I can set to private and not select the guest and free boxes which means only i can see it and no one else which is no good.

i Can set private and select the guest and free boxes but users can them post in that area which i don't want them to. It seems that the forum is not going to be the best place for the directory after all Which leaves me with little to no options it seems :(

I need to be able to have this directory somewhere, members need to be able to view it and search it but not add new entries. Any other suggestions would be great.

Ok yes i see what you mean... mmm well i was totally wrong on that one and i am so sorry, then that makes me ask, what is the purpose of private forum if those that can view can post?

Just blocking the view is only half the battle there does need to be an option for both can view and can post... Sorry about that.

Well i need to work on my copy then on mysite, im sure i can do it with a simple code mod, if your interested i will share that here when and if i get that done.

But back to your needs now....

I am not really aware of anything out of the box that can allow them to view and not post right now.   But i will keep you informed if i run into something, i will keep looking for you. 

I will be in touch..  

Ok i have the forum mod and im testing it now it looks like it works.

If the forum is private and you are not the owner or not a moderator you cannot post, there is no form to post.   You can only post if you are owner or moderator

If the forum is not private then it is normal..

Does that work for your needs?

Team you might want to move this down to the custom mod section as it appears this is a custom mod topic now.. :)

Thanks for your help though.

Agreed but it might just be something that was simply overlooked, or never brought up that you really need both options when it comes to privacy, both to view and to post.. 

I will post my code here in a bit in another topic because i want to get this sent off to the dev department asap and if approved they may add it to the core release.   I will post the link to that post here for you to change your files...

Remember to make a note someplace that you did this because you want to make sure the changes go back after an update.

In that post i will include both the mod instructions and the files if you just want to download and replace your files. 

Thanks for your patience.

In the event you change your mind here is what i promised..

http://www.oxwall.org/forum/topic/14029

thanks